Meandering through Multiple Games

I met with a spot of catastrophe in my Dragon Quest III no-equipment challenge a couple of weeks ago. As I loaded to the opening menu, I must have somehow hit the down button twice before making my first selection, because instead of starting my game file, I deleted it instead. Having been about 40 hours into it, I was pretty devastated by it.

Since then, I haven't found the motivation to pick it back up again, but have instead been trying to figure out what I feel most motivated to play. I think I've settled into Dragon Quest XI as my current main game. I played several hours into it after I bought when it came out last year for PS4, but I kind of burnt myself out on Dragon Quest in general late last year and put it down for a bit. I'm getting back into it, but it's a hard game to play in 10-20 minute game sessions because there's just so much you can do. With my schedule it's really hard to get into a groove on the game. Should have held out for the Switch version, perhaps.

I just got the ship in the game last night. I didn't have time to do much with it, but it looks like it just opens up the possibilities even wider. It may take a while before I start feeling like I've made any headway.

In the shorter moments, I've also been playing my old NES Castlevania games. Last year they released a Netflix original show, which I tried out the first few episodes of, based on the third game in this series, and also put Simon Belmont in Super Smash Bros. I experienced a wave of nostalgia and started playing the first one not long ago, beating it through after a week or so. I started both of the next two games and have passwords on my phone for both of them.

By the way, modern phone cameras make the perfect solution to the onerous task of jotting down NES game passwords. You can do it in an instant with no chance of transcription errors (although you do have to check that you didn't take a blurry picture), and you don't have to worry about losing the paper you wrote it down on (but be careful you don't delete it by mistake). Would that these had existed in my youth to circumvent endless frustration with NES passwords.

Another interesting aside: not long after I started replaying these old Castlevania games, Konami announced an anniversary package for modern systems, including the Switch, that has all of these games as well as the SNES, Game Boy, and Genesis Castlevania games, for around twenty bucks. I've put it on my birthday list and hope to be able to enjoy me some more classic Castlevania next month.

I've also been playing Dragon Quest IV for the DS. I just got to the area formerly known as Gardenbur Castle, now called Femiscyra. I'm cruising along and I think that when I finish it I'll also finally do my first full replay of Dragon Quest V for the Super Famicom.

Aside from that, I've booted up my Smash Bros. Ultimate a couple of times (partly to play as Simon after beating Castlevania). I also play a few games of Tetris 99 most days, as I have for the past few months. It's my latest bout of Tetris addiction that has grabbed me stronger than any other version since the original Game Boy. I win about one in six games on average.